Bulletproof
by xXblinksXx
Summary: AE. "I'm sorry about your friend. Thank you for everything you have done for humanity." Mat woke up in a sterile room on February 1, 2010. There were bandages on his body.
1. Chapter 1

Matt stared down at the simple spiral notebook that had been placed on his bedside table.

Supposedly, inside the red cover, there were 250 pages. He glanced back up at the small, pale teenager in front of him.

"You do not have to begin to recall anything specific. However, Saitou-sensei suggests that it may help you to reconstruct your goals."

Not even Matt, who had conditioned himself to refute anything and everything that he thought to be truth, could deny that the small childlike boy in front of him was unnerving to the core.

_Use it, my ass. Never going to happen, pajama boy._

Mat didn't articulate his thoughts, preferring to redirect the conversation back to where it had come to a dead end the previous day.

"I want my laptop, Marcus."

End of the conversation.

Near looked at Matt with an unreadable look before turning and walking out of the room. Matt sighed and lay back on the sanitized hospital bed.

He was almost positive he was in the psyche ward, but no one would tell him. They skipped the details, by either telling him the name of the hospital, responding back with a different question, or ignoring him completely.

If anyone had bothered to ask; he could have told them that there were exactly 2,345,762 black specks on the ceiling tiles above his head, and there were 128 whole concrete blocks that made up the room. But no one ever bothered to ask the red head whose hair was slowly starting to fade back into its natural brunette tone.

_**July 27, 2010**_

_**I'm not quite sure how to go about this. **_

_**The shrink says that I should write to whomever makes me feel the most comfortable, but how can you write to someone who has been stolen from you? **_

_**How can you correspond with a martyr that chose to end His life just as he had lived it; as an anonymous ghost? **_

_**I don't have anyone else, not after that fucking case. They all died, or don't trust me on my own. **_

_**Fuck, I can't even get cleared to leave the hospital yet. It's been almost three fucking months...and I...and it still hurts.**_

_**Everything hurts.**_

_**The holes where the bullets pierced my skin, my mind from where nothing even started to make sense any more. **_

_**Everything.**_

_**Marcus still hasn't given me my computer back, or fuck, it doesn't even need to be mine anymore. All of the files that I had stored on my laptop are obsolete, useless. **_

_**Not to mention; probably gone.**_

_**I doubt Marcus and the NPA and the FBI and pretty much anyone else on the case would have let the files survive. The files that solved the fucking case for them, the ones I wrote down, are probably destroyed now. **_

_**I don't even know why I'm still doing this; it's not like anything I can do is going to bring **_**Him**_** back to me. The shrink Marcus got me said that I have anger issues.**_

_**Maybe he's right, but he doesn't know anything if he thinks **__**my**__** issues are serious. **_

**He**_** was so much worse than me. **_

_**If anything, **_**He**_**'s the reason I ever get angry. **_

_**I used to be so calm, almost as placate as Marcus, only I had more characteristics. **_

_**Like eating, walking in the sunlight, being able to acquire a skin shade darker than 'porcelain'. **_

_**He used to call me crazy when I told him why Marcus got ahead of Him. **_

_**He was right; **_**He**_**'s always right. **_

_**I remember the day in the orphanage when I gave **_**Him**_** the rosary that was the only reminder of my parents. **_

_**That was the day I made a score higher than **_**Him**_**, and **_**He**_** was so fucking angry at me. **_

_**I plucked the rosary out of the small box I kept under my bed that had what was left of my parents things and handed **_**Him**_** the rosary. **_

**He**_** never took it off after that, and **_**He**_** wasn't angry with me anymore. **_

_**I don't really remember my parents all that well. **_

_**Actually, I only remember my mother holding my hand during a church service one morning. **_

_**I don't remember much, except that she was crying and clutching that rosary in her hands, the skin around it turning white. Everything was really dark, and her thin spider veined hand was clutching onto mine. **_

_**The pastor was talking about someone who was really great, but I had just wanted to go home to play on the Nintendo that I had gotten for my birthday. **_

_**When I think back to that memory now, I'm not so sure that it was my mother, although it's not going to change anything if it wasn't. **_

_**Marcus offered me a job working for him so that I could "pay the rent" as he put it. **_

_**I don't need a job. I need for them to stop crowding around me like I was a small child, and I need for the past four years to have been a dream.**_

_**Fuck, I need just the past six months to have been a dream. I need to wake up with Him wrapped in my arms again, and I need to hear His voice talking, even if He was just yelling at me. I need to have back what I had when I found Him in that bar in L.A.**_

_**I just noticed that I'm writing in paragraph form. It's really weird.**_

_**Maybe I'll start**_

_**to write this in poetic form**_

_**just to fuck with that overpaid shrink**_

_**who thinks that he knows**_

_**everything about me**_

_**when in fact he knows nothing**_

_**Marcus can go fuck himself**_

_**because that's better than nothing.**_

_**I'm such a child sometimes. Everyone always told me that. Especially Him after we had an argument. **_

_**I would sit there and pout, and eventually a smile would spread itself across His face, and **_

_**He'd smack me across the back of my head and tell me that I needed to grow up; to become a man, but I'd seen what 'growing up' had done to Him, and I never wanted to grow up if I was going to be the same. **_

_**Not that I'd had a choice this time, though. **_

_**He needed my help, again, though I had told him time and time again that I wasn't good for anything. **_**He**_** never listened to all of my self loathing bullshit though, so what made me think that He was going to that time. **_

_**My shrink is probably going to make me read this. Probably aloud to him.. **_

_**Fucking creep. **_

_**Or read it to Marcus. **_

_**Actually, Marcus probably was going to send one of his people to sneak in here later after the drugs knock me out to read through and make sure I written down anything incriminting. **_

_**You know, I can't even fucking sleep on my own anymore. **_

**He**_** haunts my dreams when I do, but the pills make the dreams go away, they make everything stop until the morning, and I don't know that I'm ever going to want to be with out them. **_

_**They make me forget the pain of losing my entire world, of losing everything that meant anything.**_

The sun had long since dropped below the skyline when a nurse came in to check on Mat and to inform him that he would not be receiving his dosage of Ambien, instead, she handed him a half capsule that resembled Zaleplon and a glass of water.

_What the hell? She has to be fucking kidding. _

"Mr. Jones, I would like to be sure that you take your medication. I do not want to be forced to add it to the list of medicines that have to be taken intravenously."

"I'll take my real medicine, thank you." Mat replied, his Japanese every bit as smooth and flawless as hers.

The petite nurse glared at him for a second before writing something on her clipboard and shaking her head slightly, an irritated expression on her face.

"Bliad," ***** Mat muttered under his breath.

This was _not_ happening.

There was no way that Near was going to let them take away the sleeping pills.

Take the morphine, take whatever else was running through that I.V., but don't fucking let them steal the Ambien away from him.

Never mind, leave the morphine; Mat needed all the drugs he could get his hands on. The doctors couldn't take away the numb.

Not yet.

Not when Mat thought he was so close to getting out.

***Pronunciation of whore in Russian. Written as Блиaд**


	2. Chapter 2

A pale teenager with an impeccable complexion peered into Mat's hospital room. It had taken an excessive amount of talking and reasoning before he could convince the hotel management that the other boy- no man, now- required a private room in order to heal properly. Near reached up and laced his fingers through the achromatic hair that grew from his head down to a length which prevented his sensitive ears from being exposed.

He hated hospitals.

Ever since he was born, he'd lived in a hospital, with the exception of Wammy's House. However, even then he had had to rushed back into the hospital anytime his disease acted up.

Damned Griscelli Sydrome.

Although Near hated to admit it, he wished he had died like he was supposed to when he was younger. The marrow transplants, however, combined with regular poking and prodding about had kept his body running into his teens. His body wasn't going to last much longer though; he could fell death wrapping itself around his bones. He sighed heavily as the brunette in the other room slept.

When had Mello learned why he was always sick?

Was it before he met Halle? Or after? Had Mello blown up his headquarters because he believed them to be useless to him if he were to aid Near? Or did he do just to save his ass?

Irrelevant.

Mat needed to be escorted to Saitou's room for his counsel and evaluation session.

Not again already.

There was no way that the ! sessions with Mr. I-Have-A-Fan-Fucking-Tastic-Life were increasing.

"Come along, Mat, it's time to see Saitou-sensei again."

Great.

Wonderful.

Fuck him with a hot iron while they were at it; it would cause him less distress.

Stupid Nurse. It was time for them to let him out. No one stays in a hospital as long as he has.

"If you don't come along on your own, I'll need to get Marcus to come and get you, or, as Marcus himself suggested, I could inform Saitou-Sensei of your room number, and you two could have your sessions in your room whenever the sensei deems them necessary.

Mat felt his body shudder with disgust. Swinging his legs over the side of the bed, he got up and followed the petite Japanese nurse to the room that he abhorred.

_Mat, it's time to get up._

_Was 'at?_

_Wake up you lazy fuck._

_Oh._

_"Melllllloooo. Do I have to?" Mat rolled over and showed a lazy half grin to the blonde towering over at him, already showered and dressed in the leather that he vehemently objected to._

_"No, of course not, Let me just go find some other shithead with a Camaro in three hours' time that might possibly have enough intelligence to make it out alive and keep his part of the plan intact."_

_Mello's voice dripped with thick sarcasm as he leaned down and planted a desperate kiss on the redhead's lips, capitulating as a hand threaded its way through the blonde hair._

_He held on tight, the strands twisting and tangling around spindly fingers as Mat held on to his other part, the part that filled the emptiness he hadn't realized he had until it was exposed. A tightness formed in the pit of his abdomen and expanded. Pulling back, he did a quick once over of Mello's face, Mello's body, Mello's eyes. He didn't get past those fucking eyes. _

_Never had. Never would._

_"We have to be fast."_

_Twenty minutes._

_Twenty minutes of pushing each other towards the chasm, pushing and pushing and...and falling._

_Nineteen of pure bliss, one of ecstasy, caught up in heaven._

_Fifteen more, and they were clean again, ready to go. Mat reached his arm around his lover's waist pulling him in for another kiss,_

_"See you at the crossroads, okay?"_

_Mello smiled, sadly, but a smile nonetheless. The sight gave Mat a reason, and a wide grin weaved its way over his._

_"At the crossroads, Matty."_

_Mat left first, but only barely, Mello passed him at a stoplight about two blocks later._

_Lighting a final cigarette before he had to zone in on Takada, Mat sat back for a second and inhaled the nicotine-laced smoke._

_Time to Dance._

_He pushed down on the gas pedal and the car glided forward, gaining speed as he drew nearer._

_Reaching across to the passenger seat, Mat grabbed two of the smoke bombs._

_She was in his line of sight._

_One to the left, one to the right, and smoke filled the air._

"_Good__ luck, Mel."_

_Mat flushed as he zipped out of the square as quickly as possible; he hadn't gotten clean enough. With a glance in the mirror, however, any trace of chagrin was erased from the gamer's face as Takada's body guards closed in much quicker than he had expected._

_He was almost out of the city, in an hour, he'd be off, scot-free._

_Shit. Motherfucking shit._

_An arc of discreet, black cars blocked his pathway. They had already known where he was going. How many guards did that bitch have, anyway?_

_"Stay calm, you know something they need. You have information that they want." he told himself inside his head._

_He was ready. Mat stepped out into the light of the street lamps._

_Motherfuckers._

_How dare they carry badges while protecting the spokesperson of a murderer._

_"Come on, guys._

_Since when were the Japanese allowed to carry such big guns?"_

_Tyrants. Mat hoped they all got what they deserved. He recited what Mello told him to say. He teased and taunted them, letting the fuckers know that he knew something they probably didn't want to become public knowledge._

_As the first gun fired, he seriously hoped that Mel's part hadn't gone so far south. When Mat heard the metal bullets smash into the hood of his baby, he plotted murder in his head. No one, not even Mello, fucked with his Carolena._

_The cars started spinning; his entire body had gone numb after the third bullet tore its way through his body. All of the sudden, the pavement looked really soft, like a bed, like his bed. It was a good thing, he thought, because it seemed to be getting a hell of a lot closer._

Saitou-Sensei was a short man in his mid-fifties who had grey hair, and constantly had a clipboard on him that he used, Mat presumed, as a scribbling pad for inaccurate assumptions.

Sessions were a hit-miss kind of thing for Mat; sometimes he'd walk away feeling more relaxed, thinking maybe this he had said something to convince the little shrink that he was mentally stable. Sometimes, a trigger would get pulled, and he'd flip over a table, storm out, or threaten to beat the shit out of the next person who said a word to him.

However, most of the time, Mat kept his mouth shut and let the doctor talk himself into believing he had done something to help the ex-smoker.

"Hello, Mathias, how are you feeling today?"

Mat glanced up from the floor to examine the expression on the older man's face. If he expected Mat to say anything back, he was going to have to try harder. A whole hell of a fucking lot harder.

"Marcus told me that you wanted to regain possession over your personal computer, is this true?"

Mat slowly nodded his head once.

"As you know, your previous laptop has been seized by the Japanese government, and is most likely going to be destroyed. However, I'm sure that we would be able to acquire a new computer for your use. Naturally, your online traffic would have to be monitored due to your abilities and your knowledge of certain sensitive materials."

A look that must have displayed the greatest amount of hatred Mat had ever felt flitted across his face. They were going to taunt him with the idea of being free, and inform him that his every move would be watched.

_Big Brother is __watching__._ Mat shuddered at the line.

Orwell was warning, not guiding.

Agitation began flowing through his veins, pricking his nerves, making everyone seem like the enemy. He glanced back up at Saitou, who was scribbling on his clipboard again.

Why did he even have to mention the security? Mat would have found it sooner, rather than later, but it was to be expected anyways. He could accept it, and then erase the tracers. He'd need someone else around though.

Someone like...like Linda.

She used to help him set up his systems after He left. They would run the wire behind the wardrobe, and she would distract Roger and the matrons by sending them off on a ridiculous expedition to retrieve whatever bully she had decided needed to be sentenced to a month of doubled chores.

Only top ten were excused from household duties. They needed the excess time to study or solve miniature cases which had already been reviewed by L as easily solved, for him, anyways; Whammy and Roger usually checked over one to ensure it was appropriate for the student it was assigned to.

If only Linda were here.

Mat flicked his eyes up towards the clock hung in the center of the opposing wall, two cinderblocks from the top. _His time was up._ Mat brushed off the imaginary dust from his lounging pants and made for the door, not even pausing to hear Saitou inform him the a laptop would be waiting for him after the next session, provided it went benevolently.

_It was difficult to find him, at first. Mat had absolutely no idea where he might have possibly fled to, but then he remembered the phone call. The GPS chip. Mat had installed it into at least three of Mello's phones as soon as they caught back up again._

_There was an alley about a hundred yards away from the old oil company building, long forgotten since America had secured a trade deal with Arabia. Rod had secured it and used it as a kind of third headquarters._

_Then Mello had stepped in, somewhere along the line and made it, and the group of lackeys under Rod's control, so much more. He flipped the subgroup of the west coast Mafia into one of the most dangerous, volatile, and powerful groups on the planet._

_Mello had the notebook of death._

_Then something happened, a switch was flipped._

_The President committed suicide, or, rather, Kira killed him when it was discovered Mello was blackmailing him._

_Another Note was discovered. Now Mello needed to figure out how to keep them both out of the hands of Kira and Near._

_The NPA had _something_ to do with Kira, they just weren't sure what. There was a rat, or someone there was Kira; Near had the younger Yagami pinpointed, as L had, bu__t there was no solid evidence._

_ Mat could smell the explosion before he could see it. The tell-tell smell of charred concrete and plaster curled out across the neighborhood, wrapping its tendrils into every crevice and flitting through open windows, determined to choke the living ones inside._

_ The tracker led Mat to the alley, getting all the more frantic as he neared it. A glance up from the small device told Mat where he could find the bombshell that had been gone for several days now._

_ Gingerly, he made his way over to the patch of silken blonde hair, now dulled with thick coats of dust and dirt. But it was Mello. No matter how fucked up he was, it was Mello._

_ The left side of his body seemed to have taken the majority of the blast. Whether Mello had planned for it to be his left rather than his right, Mat didn't know, but it was a, forgive the term, godsend that Mello's dominant side, his dominant hand, and strangely, his dominant eye, was relatively unharmed._

_ Mat crouched down beside the bloody mass, having to remind himself repeatedly of how much worse it could have been._

_ "Mel?" Mat kept his voice as low and quiet as possible. There was no way he could let anyone find them. "I'm going to pick you up and put you in Carolena's back, okay? Just... I don't know, pinch me or something if I hurt you too bad and I'll try to stop. You can eve fuck up the leather once you're in, just… just don't leave me."_

_ Hooking an arm around the thin shoulder, and another under Mello's knees, Mat lifted the both of them up. The backs of his thighs were burning with the effort, but he knew if he tried to use his back the weight might be too much or he might bend over and hurt Mello._

_ A light pinch informed him of two things: Mello had heard him, and this shit was going to have to move along at a faster pace._

_Mat half sprinted, half stumbled to the flashy red automobile, and used three of his fingers to quickly open the door latch to the back seat. He had to be careful to avoid having any parts of Mello collide with any part of Carolena._

_Once Mello was inside, Mat leaned in over him, making sure he wasn't in any excessive pain. Those turquoise eyes flashed open for the first time since Mat had found him, and they swam with pain, opening the window into Mello's mind._

_ Planting a light kiss on the blonde's forehead, Mat placed an old blanket he kept in the car over Mello to camouflage him, slightly, from any prying eyes that might be looking out. Mat jumped into the driver's seat and .floored it._

_** Once again, here I go. Maybe I should have kept my temper. Maybe I. None of that. I need **__**to relax. He pissed me off, I freaked out. I will **__**never**__** regret. After I ditched Saitou, Marcus came and found me.**_

_**Linda Is supposed to come see me. I'm hoping maybe she break me out of here too.**_

_**I sound like a complete imbecile most of the time. It's probably the meds, I would cut down on them, but since they actually work, I might as well keep using them. It probably doesn't help that I'm completely hooked on them, or, at least, I'm hooked on the night drugs.**_

_** I'm supposed to get my laptop back. I'm s**__**ure it'll have to censorship programs and other shit on it, but it shouldn't be too difficult to break through. Or, rather, not **__**my**__** laptop, a new laptop, probably some brand name one. Maybe I can talk Near into getting me that one I saw in the forum, the...**__**I don't remember what it was. I had a picture of it tacked up onto the wall for a while; I could have stripped it and used the parts for my perfect machine.**_

_** He used to make fun of me for doing that, you know. Putting pictures of what I wanted in places where I'd see them several times a day. But it always worked.**_

_**I had a cutout of Car**__**o**__**l**__**e**__**na's brother or sister model from a magazine taped onto the bathroom mirror, and when I finally got into that account, I bought her from the dealership on 5**__**th**__**.**__** I think Marcus dropped off the mags. **_

_**I wish I could get off of this floor. I don't think I would even attempt to go out the front door, or even a back or side one. I just really want to walk around more. Maybe there's a courtyard or something, and I could be outside without having to execute a security breach.**_

_** I could go see the newborns. I wouldn't ever have told Him how much I love babies, but, fuck, they're adorable. He didn't like kids, said they were obnoxious little shits. I think he got that idea from B. He used to idolize the creep and would follow him around for hours when B still lived at Whammy's.**_

_** That was back when we were really little though, I was... five? Six? And brand new at Whammy's; fresh meat, per se. Mello had lived there since he was four, his parents died in a car crash two years before. After that, he lived in a small town orphanage with paper thin walls and bad heating. He'd have killed me if he knew I let this info escape my memory.**_

_** I'm surprised I even have a memory left. Fucking bodyguards weren't worth shit, were they, you fucking cunt.**_

Mat chucked the pencil across the room. An unsatisfying click against the wall and another when the utensil smashed into the floor did nothing to decrease the waves of anger washing over his body.

"What am I going to do now? What the fucking hell am I supposed to do?" Mat yelled to the ghosts in the room. They surrounded him and pulled on his clothes, calling his name.

So many ghosts.

He pulled his knees to his chest, grasping his forelegs as tight as he possibly could. No one else except Near and Linda were left and Near... Near was... not exactly a friend anymore. At least Mat had the excuse of time and miles between Linda and himself. Near was in the same city, sometimes even in the same building, and they treated each other like mere acquaintances, enemies at the best.

But maybe, just maybe, Near could be Mat's ticket out of the psych ward. If Mat could just act okay for awhile, maybe he'd be free.

He could go wherever he wanted to, sleep where he wanted, eat what he wanted, buy what he wanted, and use a computer as he wanted. He'd be _free._ It might only take a couple weeks, and he could be on a plane back to England.

Or France.

Or Italy.

Or America.

It didn't matter.

If Mat spent a few weeks keeping his temper in check, allowing the nurse to reduce his dosages, and whatever else they threw at him, he'd have his life back.

A free as a bird kind of life.

Hello friends. I finally decided to start posting some of this story just kinda to inform you that I am actually not dead.

Reviewing definitely feeds my motivation, so that'd be super awesome.

Hope you like it :)


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